


i'd meet you where the spirit meets the bones

by coalitiongirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Post-Series, well it spans the second-to-last scene of the show until the last but yk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:20:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28053072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl
Summary: After Regina returns to Storybrooke at the end of the series, Emma and Regina go on a road trip to stitch together all the realms that Regina has unlocked.The word of the day isyearn.
Relationships: Evil Queen | Regina Mills & Henry Mills & Emma Swan, Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Emma Swan
Comments: 46
Kudos: 647





	i'd meet you where the spirit meets the bones

**Author's Note:**

> so last night i got into bed and put on evermore on shuffle, listened to ivy once. then replayed it twice more. then got up and wrote through the night. here i am, here they are, and i am so glad y'all love them like i do.

_Oh, goddamn_  
_My pain fits in the palm of your freezing hand_  
_Taking mine, but it's been promised to another_  
_Oh, I can't  
Stop you putting roots in my dreamland_  
_My house of stone, your ivy grows_  
_And now I'm covered in you._

_([x](https://genius.com/Taylor-swift-ivy-lyrics))_

It doesn’t start. It would have to have started to finish; and it never starts, so it never finishes.

Maybe that’s where they go wrong. Maybe it’s before: Regina, bursting forth from a portal after a seismic shift in Storybrooke, and Emma is gripped with the sudden sensation of _wholeness_ , impossible. Impossible because she hadn’t known that she’d been incomplete. 

The worlds come together in a strange medley, and Emma doesn’t know that it’s happening until she looks up and sees, in the distance, a towering castle with a dragon soaring above it. She says, uncertainly, “Is this some kind of new attack on town?” and for a moment, she is forced to grapple with the fact that she hasn’t fought a Big Bad in years, that the town is at peace and she doesn’t have a babysitter yet and _how_ is she supposed to fight an enemy without Regina at her side–

And then the portal appears in front of her, as seamless as a hollow in a tree, and her heart is healed. 

Regina emerges hands-first, and Emma recognizes them. What is it, when you can see two hands appear from a whirling orange inferno and you know them without hesitation? What can it be, when you have spent so many years memorizing the shape and touch of them? And in that instant, a dozen witty remarks run through Emma’s mind and she says…

…none of them, when Regina steps through the portal. Regina stands in front of her with her eyes bright with exhilaration and her smile heartbreakingly wide, and Emma is frozen in silence as she drinks Regina in. 

It’s been months since Regina had disappeared. Longer for Regina, Emma thinks (once she can think again), because there had been some strange fiddling with time and they’re closing an twelve-year paradox now. It isn’t that Regina had left and Emma had been bereft. No. There had been some lonely wistfulness, some quiet dreams of following behind Regina and Henry, but Emma had settled into an empty existence and left it unquestioned until now.

_Now_ , Regina standing before her, and Emma can only run forward and laugh and cry a little as she reaches to Regina. “Regina,” she whispers, and her hands reach for Regina’s and then fall, limply, to her sides. She doesn’t grasp Regina, is suddenly conscious of the fact that if she dares to hold her, she might never let go. 

Regina has no compunctions, and her hand rises to cup Emma’s cheek. Emma basks, intoxicated in their contact, and Regina tilts her head and smiles a new smile just for Emma. “Emma,” she breathes, and she looks at Emma as though she hasn’t seen her in decades.

Could it be that she hasn’t? Emma freezes, caught in that heartrending possibility. She’d been sure that eventually, they would have been able to open more reliable lines of contact. She’d banked on it when she’d agreed to stay behind. It’s been lonely months since Regina and Henry had disappeared into that portal, but she’d comforted herself with the knowledge that they hadn’t been gone for good. 

Emma gazes at Regina, the weight of years-not-years apart driving into her, and her heart is made and unmade again.

And then: there’s another movement from inside the portal, Regina clears her throat, and she says, “There’s someone I’d like you to meet again.”

* * *

Emma hasn’t fallen in love before, exactly. Her relationships have been practical, the kind of ease that comes with being adored and settling into it. She loves, yes. Loved Neal, loves Killian, had even loved the fiance she’d had in a memory-altered New York. A lost girl who finds someone who is devoted to her will always love. 

_In_ love is a trickier proposition, the sort of thing she’d chalked up to Hollywood overselling romances that just aren’t realistic. Heartstopping, swelling-music, breathless love is the stuff of stories, not of actual relationships. She’d been sure of that, because there had been so many men and she should have found that kind of romance with one of them along the way, if it were true.

She had always assumed that the way Regina had dominated her life had just been about Regina’s inimitable flair for dramatics. Regina consumes thoughts and fills rooms with her presence because Regina is just _that kind of person_ , the sort who is unforgettable even in passing. So Emma has fixated on Regina, has found herself obsessing over Regina’s happiness and brooded over every argument because Regina just has an _energy_. Everyone feels it.

_No, Emma,_ Ruby says gently when Emma mentions it. _No, they don’t._ She’s galloped up to town from Oz, now just a half hour away, her girlfriend jogging beside her. Dorothy’s arm is loose around Ruby’s back, relaxed and comfortable, and Emma glances at it and then back at Ruby’s compassionate face and doesn’t know how to respond to that.

Killian is away throughout all of this, which is probably for the best. He never used to go away, had preferred to keep a tight hold on Emma over the years that Henry had spent in high school, but now he leaves on lengthy trips that give them both the space they need. Emma had wondered if he hadn’t trusted Regina around Emma, if this is some leftover distrust of the once-Evil Queen. She thinks now that he might have known more than he’d let on. 

And it’s easier this way, because this new Henry that Regina has brought back– from the realm that Emma had wished into being– would not have done well with Killian ingratiating himself to him. Henry has a sword that he wears hilted at his belt and he draws it once when Zelena bursts into the house without knocking. He jumps at ringing phones and nearly stabs the toaster oven and looks at Emma with searching eyes that beg, _do you remember me?_

Emma remembers. She remembers years of weakness and fear, of never measuring up to the fierce king and queen of her palace. She remembers her relief when Henry had been born, and the knowledge that she had thus done the one thing necessary to her role as princess. She remembers sniveling at the thought of her parents being killed by the Evil Queen, and she remembers the empty desperation of failing, over and over again. She hates remembering the lifetime of the Wish Realm, and this Henry is a living reminder of it.

Regina watches her and says, “He doesn’t blame you for what went wrong with…when his grandparents…” And she can’t finish the sentence, either. This Henry watches Regina with distrust and aching love, and Regina touches him as though he is a creature easily spooked. 

Regina touches _everyone_ , and Emma has never noticed it as much as she does now. Regina’s hand grazes her shoulder when she strikes a conversation. Regina’s fingers circles her wrist when they walk together outside, a silent prelude to a conversation– _I’d forgotten how beautiful Maine is in autumn_ or _Lucy and Jacinda are so eager to meet you_. Regina’s knuckles stroke Emma’s cheek when Emma feels the weight of their years apart. Emma is drunk on Regina’s touch, is helpless to resist or brush her off.

Regina loves Hope from the moment she meets her, and there is something about Emma’s children that makes them so utterly Regina’s from the start. Hope is soothed only in Emma’s or Regina’s arms, and she looks up at Regina trustingly and wails when she is taken from her. Regina fits seamlessly, and Emma can never tear her eyes away from her, from the soft features of her smile or the incandescence of her gaze around the children who are hers and Emma’s.

_Okay, but she just has that weird glow around her,_ Emma had protested to Ruby. _Like you just have to drink her in for a little bit after she comes into a room._

Ruby had shaken her head. _No, Emma_ , she’d said, and she’d looked at Emma with weary eyes that had glinted with sadness. _Haven’t you worked that out yet?_

* * *

Regina smiles more now. She carries herself with the confidence of someone who has looked her past in the eye and stopped fleeing from it, and she travels through worlds as a healer, not an adversary. Emma sits beside her, driving them along in her Bug with a car seat set up in the back and Henry snoozing against the window.

“I’m the star chauffeur and I expect to be paid in weird fairytale land fast food,” she says on one of the first days.

Regina balances Hope against her and reaches out to take Emma’s hand. “I thought you were here as my partner,” she says, and something golden and bright blossoms to life in Emma’s chest and takes root. 

“Partner with better driving etiquette,” she offers, and Regina scoffs and grits out graphic insults at the horse trotting far too slowly in front of them for the next stretch of the trip. Emma peers into the rearview mirror to check if Henry is alarmed by them, but he’s grinning fondly at Regina, his earlier mistrust absent for now.

It isn’t until they’ve been on the road for two days that the topic of Emma’s husband comes up. “We’ll probably run into him in one of these lands,” she says, shrugging away the topic. “He gets wanderlust. And I still have decent reception in these fantasy worlds.” She holds up her phone. Yesterday, her Henry– full-grown Henry, a man now with a family– had called.

_Yeah, of course we spoke_ , he’d said when she asked. _You used to spend half of each conversation grilling me about Mom and the other half dodging my questions about your love life._ He sounds amused, and Emma dares to ask a question she hadn’t thought she would.

His voice had been careful. _I don’t know if I should tell you that,_ he says seriously, and then, _I’m glad you were able to get away with Mom. She never called you once we figured out how to phone home, and I think you were kind of hurt by it._

She hasn’t shared the contents of Grown Henry’s phone call with Regina. It raises questions, ones she wants answers to, but she senses that they would ruin something precious. Instead, she memorizes the look of satisfaction that spreads across Regina’s face when they successfully stabilize two worlds together.

There are no hotel rooms in most of the worlds they visit, only dusty taverns with a few take-it-or-leave-it rooms. In the place that they stay on the third night, there are only two rooms, one small and cramped and the other slightly larger with a single big bed. Henry claims the small room, and Emma doesn’t bother hauling the Pack ‘n Play out of the trunk to try to fit it into the second. Instead, she and Regina take opposite sides of the bed and lay Hope down between them.

Hope coos, kicking her little legs and burbling her contentment, and Regina brushes a tender kiss to Hope’s brow. Emma’s entire heart convulses, seized in the grip of a towering ivy that has crept through her chest and consumed it, and she dares to meet Regina’s gaze.

Regina says, “Goodnight, love,” and her eyes are on Hope but Emma’s throat still clogs up to hear it.

* * *

Emma allows herself to wonder one day if, perhaps, she’s just never found that kind of fairytale romance because she’d been looking in the wrong direction. She shrugs it off because she’s never been one to dwell too deeply into her most repressed feelings and because Regina is cooing at Hope until Hope smiles and Emma doesn’t want to miss it by getting lost in her heart. 

Instead, she watches the way that Hope’s face splits into a smile and Regina kisses the baby’s nose and lays her back into the grass beside their campfire. Henry is huddled on the other side of the fire, prodding at it with a stick, and Emma says, “How did you find each other?”

“Long story,” Henry says, staring into the flames.

“The usual way I meet people,” Regina says, her eyes sparkling as she looks up at Emma. She’s stretched out across the grass, on her stomach, and she props herself up onto her elbows to see her. “He tried to kill me.” 

Emma startles, fierce protectiveness warring with helplessness, because there is only enough space in her crowded heart for them both at peace. She looks at Henry, whose eyes are downcast, and at Regina, who watches Henry with unvarnished love, and her heart settles again. “You did accidentally crush his grandparents’ hearts,” she points out. “It wasn’t his first time trying to kill you.”

Henry speaks quietly. “I don’t remember…all I remember is throwing my sword and then you were both gone.” 

“Emma came back to herself,” Regina offers, twitching fingers across Hope’s belly until she gurgles in delight and kicks the grass. “She didn’t want you to become a killer. It triggered her memories.” 

“Is that how you remember it?” Emma asks, amused. The way they justify their actions has never quite passed muster, but it had been safer than facing the truth. Emma had sacrificed her soul _for the town_ . Regina had given Emma a lifetime of good memories _for Henry’s sake_. They dance around the truth, whatever it may be, because it’s the only way that they can still… 

But Regina looks at Emma with eyes that know perfectly well, that gaze laden with truth while her lips deny it, and Emma shivers in the warmth of the fire and wiggles into her sleeping bag. “Early morning tomorrow,” she says, reaching for Hope. Hope turns to her with trusting eyes, and she curls onto Emma’s chest and spares one last smile for Regina. “We should sleep.”

“Yes.” Regina leans over to kiss Hope’s nose again, and her eyes are so close that Emma hurts with wanting. 

It hurts even more when Regina pulls away.

* * *

Grown Henry calls again on a video call, this time with a woman and a child who are immediately Emma’s family, and Regina presses her face to Emma’s and steers the phone call while Emma stares at them, wordless and yearning.

Twelve years. She would never have let the distance stretch on for so long. Except that in another lifetime, she had, hadn’t she? It doesn’t make sense. It isn’t in her nature to spend so much time away from Regina and Henry, to give them up when they’d been just a portal away. When this had started, she had imagined it temporary.

She had imagined that Regina might be gone for a week or two, at first, that this had just been a situation that had called for a quick defeat of a villain and then a happy reunion. Then the weeks had stretched to months and Emma had been positive that they’d just been trying to get home.

It had been the aged Robin Mills, tearing through the town only recently to find Emma and Regina, who had mentioned _twelve years_. It’s incomprehensible. It’s been eleven months, and waking up to see Regina’s face and Henry stretched out nearby is a revelation. She couldn’t have waited that long.

She calls Grown Henry back after the initial call, wandering out into topsy-turvy wilderness of another world while Regina and Henry speak to a king and queen about opening routes from this kingdom to Wonderland, its closest neighbor. “Hi,” she says, and she is stricken by the years again, by the boy who will never be a boy again. 

Grown Henry looks at her with affection that is never tempered by hesitation or resentment. He loves her and never hides it, and she longs to love in his unafraid way. “Hi, Mom,” he says, and she does the quick math that she does each time he calls her that. _Ten years. Eight years. Another twelve years. Eight to twenty-two. How am I a Mom?_

She doesn’t say it. “I don’t understand,” she whispers instead. “How could I not come after you?” 

Grown Henry’s eyes turn somber, and he takes a breath. “I think you wanted to,” he says finally. “You used to talk all the time about how Hope and Lucy could have grown up together, and about how Storybrooke didn’t need you anymore. I’d tell you over and over how we’d love if you could come for a while and you’d…” His voice trails off. “I think you just wanted an invitation.”

Emma doesn’t understand. Or she does, flowers strangling her throat as she tries to ask, and it’s a step too far into an abyss. “You had invited me, though,” she rasps out.

Grown Henry smiles at her, and it’s sad. “Yes,” he agrees.

She wonders for a moment if she’d have gone to a place where Regina had been, if she would have packed up and fled the world she’d known to invade the space of a woman who had never contacted her again. It isn’t bravery she’d have needed; it’s brashness, which she’s never lacked before, and she doesn’t know why it would have failed her now.

Except when it’s late at night and they’ve finally made the agreements they’ve needed. Regina and Emma let magic thrum through them and stitch together the necessary roads between worlds, and Emma thinks _why wouldn’t you speak to me after you left?_ and brashness fails her again. She can’t ask a question, she thinks, when she isn’t ready for the answer.

When the road is finished, Regina puts an arm around Henry and surveys their handiwork. Emma puts an arm around Henry, too, Hope in a carrier against her chest, and she can feel her heartbeat like a pulse of music thrumming against her ears. Regina’s fingers run over Emma’s arm, her thumb moving perfectly in time to Emma’s heartbeat.

* * *

They make it to one of those old worlds toned in sepia, where Emma’s car fits in surprisingly well and they get odd looks for their clothes. “Wait,” Regina says, and she snaps her fingers and is dressed, abruptly, like an old-school Hollywood star. Her hair is up, a hat upon it, and she wears an evening dress that has Emma flushed and gaping, her entire body aflame with it.

Henry is clad in a charming grey suit (well, everything is grey here) and Emma can feel the little curl to her hair and the slinky material of the dress she wears. Hope is in a ruffled dress and a little bonnet, and Regina wanders around to the side door so she can retrieve Hope from her car seat. 

Emma watches her go, openmouthed. She is no stranger to the Evil Queen in dresses or to Regina in them. The Evil Queen had dressed in spiky ensembles, boxy and seductive and dangerous as the scales on a snake. Regina has worn Enchanted Forest ball gowns and the professional dresses for work that had been a pleasure to see. But this is something else. It clings to Regina with shimmery fabric that gleams in the grey sunlight, and it falls all the way to her feet, following each curve along the way. Regina is otherworldly like this, and Emma leans against the back of her seat and can only stare.

Henry snorts from behind her. “Real subtle, Mom,” he says in a low voice.

Emma tears her eyes away from Regina to give him a dirty look. “I’m not–” 

Henry looks startled. “Oh, I didn’t mean you,” he says, and Emma suddenly notices that Regina is watching her with the same heated gaze, lighting her on fire. The flowers within her burn hot and never wilt, and Emma has to focus to breathe. “Though, now that you mention it…” 

“We should go dancing,” Regina says, reaching out for Emma’s hand. “I think the people we need to find will be inside.” 

Emma’s phone buzzes on the cupholder in the front seat, and she glances down at it. She sees Killian’s face and name on the screen, the phone still buzzing with the call, and she silences it. 

She leaves her phone in the car as they walk into an old-school night club, where they get looks for bringing a baby but not for how they’re dressed. Henry dances with Regina and then with Emma, practiced ballroom steps from their various Enchanted Forest pasts, and then he sits with Hope on his lap and looks at them expectantly.

A man taps Emma on the shoulder with a quick spiel– _I’ve been watching you from across the room, and you’re exquisite_ – and Emma recoils from him and into Regina’s arms. _She’s taken_ , Regina says, and maybe it’s just that she is thinking of Killian, but there is a distinct possessiveness in the way that Regina takes Emma into her embrace, holding her to her in a sinuous waltz.

They turn and turn, pressed to each other with Regina’s arm around Emma’s waist and their other hands clasped together, and Emma can feel Regina’s breath against the shell of her ear. Emma thinks of eight months and then twelve years, and far too much wasted time before all of that where they hadn’t done this.

At the end of their waltz, they are standing with their lips only centimeters apart, and Emma is frozen with desire and guilt and the undying yearning that never leaves her when Regina is present. This isn’t new, the desire to surge forward. It’s been there since the first day of the rest of her life, _I’m Henry Mills, I’m your son,_ and _you’re Henry’s birth mother?_ , and it’s been a lifetime of taking a reluctant step back.

Tonight she doesn’t want to. How can the damage they do now be worse than all they’ve already done? When the tower has been built and finished and gleaming with precious metals, how much worse can it be to lay the final stone on top? But she waits too long, and Regina gives her a soft and sad smile before she turns and says, “There’s the manager. We should speak with her about opening a portal in the back room.” 

* * *

She doesn’t call Killian back because she has nothing to say. How can she explain picking up without a second thought and traveling the universe with someone else? Killian has invited her, more than once, on his ship for these journeys, and she has always politely declined. She likes sailing, likes the feeling of the wind in her hair and the water around her, but sailing with him is claustrophobic, like there is only enough space in the boat for him and his feelings and the empty husk of Emma Swan. 

In the Bug, their quarters are cramped but the car feels so light that it might sail away. Emma plays all the worst pop music from her childhood and Henry loves it, learns the words and sings along while Regina just shakes her head and laughs until Hope is gurgling laughter with her. “I can’t believe the fates picked someone this embarrassing to be my sworn nemesis,” Regina remarks after Emma sings a particular Backstreet Boys song from perfect memory. “What were they thinking?” 

“Definitely about my road trip potential,” Emma says, and Regina’s hand slides into hers and squeezes. “Deeply fated.”

When she thinks about _fate and destiny_ , it is usually accompanied by a healthy dose of derision. Destiny has been a bridle laid around her head, directing her where she has no escape. It is strange to lean into it as a quiet comfort. _The fates picked us_ , she thinks, and it helps her breathe. _This is fated, and it can’t be taken from us_ , she thinks, and even twelve years hadn’t stopped Regina from stepping out of that portal in front of her, had they?

Emma drives with only one hand, and she sings love songs out the windshield as her thumb runs over Regina’s wrist. 

They drive down a hill in another enchanted land to find themselves abruptly in an underwater cave in what Emma immediately dubs Atlantis. ( _How did you know?_ Henry asks wonderingly when they confirm Emma’s assumption, and Emma says, _I’m just an expert in distant worlds_. Regina pokes her.) 

They are met with wariness and then grudging acceptance, and then they are asked to stay for a few days. Hope takes baths among silvery fish and Henry rides on dolphins and Regina wears a gleaming fish-scale swimsuit and dives into the water like a pro. Emma spends her time with each of them, luxuriates in what feels like a vacation among days of endless travel, and she doesn’t question it when Henry offers to take Hope and a bottle back their rooms and keep her for the night.

She swims in the cool night with Regina, side-by-side with mermaids and Atlanteans and shimmering fish, and they find their way to an empty cove together. By the end of the night, they’re freezing, teeth chattering and hands trembling in each other’s. “Here,” Emma says, and she reaches into her rusty magic skills to produce thick, warm towels from their room. She wraps one around Regina’s back, her fingers running along Regina’s arms as she does, and then she huddles into the second. “Much better.” 

“Very well done,” Regina says, leaning back against the wall of the cove. “I didn’t think you’d been practicing your magic much when I was away.”

Emma shrugs. “Not much,” she admits. “I kind of figured I’d save it for the next big threat, but nothing ever came.” She wants to ask, to probe about why it is that Regina had never contacted her. But that’s an exercise in futility, in questions about a time that has never actually happened to her–

And what happens when she gets an answer? What will it start? And if it starts, what will it finish?

Regina speaks first, her words careful and uncertain. “Have you…have you been in touch with him at all since you’ve left?” She doesn’t emphasize the _him_ but it feels like it comes with a boom of a drum, with a whine of an oncoming train, bolded and italicized and underlined. There is a _him_ that Regina doesn’t forget, and Emma craves to know how it is that Regina can sit with her like this now, knowing about the looming thing that had destroyed it all. 

Emma huddles tighter into her towel, and she watches Regina shiver and then reaches out and cradles Regina’s hand in hers. It’s still freezing, and Emma rubs her hands against it to warm it. “I don’t want to talk about that,” she says. “Please.” 

Regina’s hand is limp in Emma’s, and she closes her eyes. It isn’t fast enough for Emma to catch the flash of pain in them, the sheer depth of agony that Regina usually conceals around her. “Hey,” Emma whispers, and she shifts closer to Regina, ducking under Regina’s towel and pulling her own towel around them both. “Hey. I’m…” 

“I know,” Regina murmurs, and she leans against Emma, her breath still warm on Emma’s neck even if the rest of her is chilled. The new drops of saltwater slipping down Emma’s cheeks now are warm, too, as they fall into Regina’s hair. 

Her lips brush against Regina’s hair, grazing her forehead, and Regina curls into her until they’re both warm and the sun’s early rays are shining through the cracks at the top of the cove.

* * *

Snow talks about a new leader when she calls Emma, someone to unify all these patchwork worlds that they’re sewing together. “The people need guidance and someone to rely on,” she says. “Someone who can pick up all the pieces of our worlds and make them whole again.” 

There is expectance when she looks at Emma, an old mainstay of relying too heavily on a savior, and Emma bounces Hope against her and laughs once. “You don’t still think that’s me, do you? I want to save people. I don’t want to run the world.” She wants to be a lieutenant, be the rock on which a leader can always lean. She wants to protect her family and raise her daughter and fight the bad guys, but she has never been comfortable as a symbol.

And Snow, at last, seems to recognize that. “I didn’t think you did,” she says. “I thought that you might be able to persuade someone else, though.” 

So Emma puts out quiet feelers as they leave Atlantis, because she won’t sign Regina up for a job that Regina doesn’t want. “The people won’t want a leader like me,” Regina scoffs. “My leadership experience is in terrorizing villages and managing small towns. I’m hardly anyone’s hero.” 

“You’re ours,” Henry says loyally from the back of the car. The Bug seems to have developed submarine capabilities since they’d driven down into Atlantis, but Emma doesn’t question it. It’s a car that has spent long enough steeped in magic that it’s evolving, and Emma knows the feeling. “You’ll have my realm and the other Henry’s, and Mom’s too. That’s three.” 

Regina shakes her head. “Henry, remind me to teach you about democracy on our next leg of this trip–” She stops, because they’ve made it to the surface. The sun is high, and there are a number of small islands in the distance. Doggedly, the Bug drives through the water toward the closest one, and Emma spots what has silenced Regina a moment later. 

In the distance is a ship, and Emma recognizes it with a sinking feeling.

Henry says, “Who is that?” 

“It’s the _Jolly Roger_ ,” Regina says quietly. “An old pirate ship.”

“He traded it away years ago,” Emma reminds them, but she knows that he’s been searching for it for a long time. He’s been away for months this time, and he’d told her when they’d last spoken last month that he’d been close to finding it. “It could be anyone’s–” 

A figure on the deck waves at the Bug, his hook glinting in the sunlight, and Regina says with resigned certainty, “No.” 

Killian hauls the car out of the water and greets her with a wide smile. “I knew you’d come out to find me,” he says, grinning at her. “The four of us, together again.” 

He’s taking this a lot better than she’d imagined, she reflects, until she realizes that he means the ship and the car as their third and fourth. She swallows and turns to the car just as Regina pushes the passenger door open and steps out.

Killian’s smile fades. “Your Majesty,” he says coolly. “I see you’re back.”

“Captain,” Regina says in a frosty tone. Emma remembers that there had been a time when they’d been allies who’d found each other useful, if perhaps not friends. That had changed sometime around when Killian had begun to pursue Emma and had never shifted back again.

“We’ve been repairing all the passageways between realms,” Emma explains hastily, motioning between them. Henry has left the car as well and placed Hope into Regina’s arms as he watches the conversation with raised eyebrows. “Have you seen all the changes?” 

“Oh, indeed. I had thought some demon had wreaked havoc with the universe,” Killian says, unfriendly eyes settling on Regina. “I see I wasn’t so far off–” 

“Hey,” Emma says, and she knows that her voice is too hard and too sharp, a drawn axe curved and ready to protect Regina from harm. Killian knows it, too, and his eyes narrow as he looks between them. Emma doesn’t speak, doesn’t calm him, and it’s Regina who finally steps in. 

“It’s a difficult task for a single witch,” she says simply. “I asked Emma to help me with this.” 

“You didn’t ask,” Emma cuts in, because as much as she dreads the backlash from Killian, she refuses to have Regina take the brunt of his resentment. “I volunteered to go.” 

“She did,” Henry agrees, his tone as edged as Emma’s. Hope is biting on his finger from where she’s cradled in Regina’s arms, and Emma reflects for a moment on the fact that Killian hasn’t commented once on either of them.

Killian stares only at Regina, his eyes made hollow with loathing. Regina’s eyes reflect it right back at him. Emma says hastily, “Maybe it’s time we headed back to Storybrooke.”

“Yes,” Killian says coldly. “Best to take the ship back. It’ll be quick.” 

Emma looks at Regina. Regina strokes Hope’s cheek and leans against Henry and says, her eyes only on them, “Quick sounds good.” 

* * *

But it isn’t quick enough. It will take days to return, and Emma drinks with Killian on the upper deck and watches with wistfulness as Regina and Henry stand together on the quarter deck and stare out at the stars. Killian shows vague interest in Hope but is more focused on Emma, and Emma smiles at him and tells him about their journeys and avoids discussion of the woman she keeps staring at across the ship.

When she can, she slips away from Killian’s watchful eyes and goes to join her son and his other mother. “We’re watching for sharks,” Henry says, pointing out at the water. “See the dorsal fin? There are all kinds of diagrams in some of the cabins, too. That one doesn’t eat humans, but the ones with sharper dorsals do.” There is a childlike fascination in how he describes the creatures, the sort of intellectual interests that Grown Henry had had once, too. They’ve been raised differently and endured different griefs, but Emma is content in the knowledge that the two boys aren’t nearly the polar opposites she’d assumed at first. 

She meets Regina’s gaze and sees the same relief in her eyes. There is a magic to knowing that there is someone out there who can read Emma’s mind without trying, who understands her so well that they don’t need words to express it. There is magic to reading Regina right back. 

“Baby,” Regina says, holding out her hands commandingly, and Emma passes her Hope. Regina holds Hope up to smile at her with a teasing singsong, “Missed me, missed me, now you’ve got to kiss me.” She kisses Hope instead, lips to baby-chubby cheek, and Hope giggles.

Emma watches them with naked longing, and Henry says loudly, “Oh, really?” He cups an ear and leans toward Hope. “You want to see what’s going on in our cabin, Hope? Well, if you _insist_.” He shoots Emma a sly look and snatches Hope from Regina, making a quick getaway. 

Emma sighs and doesn’t contest it, and Henry nudges her as he slips away. They don’t have much time until the ship finally reaches Storybrooke’s shores, and life returns from the strange, dreamlike state that it’s been since Regina had stepped out of that portal. This is the end of the line, and they still haven’t started–

She says, “Why didn’t you call me?” and Regina looks suddenly trapped. “Henry said…Grown Henry. He said that you never once…” She hesitates.

Regina says, her tone very quiet, “Are you sure these are questions you want to ask?”

Emma is alive as she’s never been before, a garden blossoming in her heart, and she takes the chance to leave the flowers wilting into yellow death and waters them instead. “How can I not?” she whispers.

Regina’s hand is so close, and Emma knows its touch from memory now, knows every fold and where the sweep of Regina’s lifeline touches hers. She takes it in hers, and Regina looks at her in silent anguish. “Emma,” she says, and Emma puts her other hand on Regina’s. “Emma,” she says, and Emma raises Regina’s hand in hers, gazes at her and dreams of spring after a cold, dark winter. “Emma,” Regina breathes, and Emma presses her lips to Regina’s knuckles, her eyes locked with Regina’s. 

It’s easier, Emma reflects, when there are curses to break and a kiss can answer every lingering question. This solidifies nothing, cancels out no reality, doesn’t scream a word for the world to hear in rainbow colors. All it does is bloom flowers upon flowers in Emma’s heart singing from her pores.

All it does is let tears of grief fall from Regina’s eyes like jewels, like new penance for a woman who has never stopped punishing herself, and Emma blossoms beneath them in defiance of their self-loathing and loves, loves, loves. 

* * *

There is to be a coronation on the day that they return, a surprise concordance of every kingdom they’ve stitched together, and Regina doesn’t know about it. She only knows that Zelena is in town and has invited her out to dinner at a realm where formal dress is required, and everyone is expected to await them for the coronation. 

Emma hurries around her little house, mulling over dresses and balancing Hope as she does, and Killian watches her in cold silence. She’s late and Hope has been in a mood since they’d come back home, cranky in this house that isn’t a yellow Bug and little tavern rooms and Regina and Henry with her all the time, and she can feel the frenetic energy that comes with fear that she might let someone down. 

Finally, she is dressed and ready, and she stares at herself in the mirror and watches, instead, Killian’s eyes on her. He stares at her like he knows that there are flowers in her chest and that they aren’t any that he’d planted, and she hesitates and turns. “Killian,” she says, and she thinks abruptly to set Hope down, to place her in a safe place behind her. 

He scoffs. “Do you think I’ll hurt her if you say what you’re going to say?” he demands. “Is that what you think of me?” 

“I’m sorry,” Emma murmurs, and she isn’t speaking about Hope. “I really am.”

And he sags like she had never imagined he would. “I know,” he says, and his shoulders drop in defeat. “I’m no fool. We were always running on borrowed time.” 

“How long did you know?” 

“Longer than you,” Killian says darkly. “Not longer than _she_ did.” He says _she_ with dark loathing, the hatred that comes from years of building fury. But he tempers it when she looks at him in alarm, still in control enough that he restrains himself instead of lashing out. “I can leave.” 

“No,” Emma says hastily. “This is your house. I’d– I think I’d rather be somewhere else, anyway. And if you still wanted to live near Hope– I mean, I don’t mean to brag, but I’m _really_ good at co-parenting with people who hate me. I’m not trying to chase you out of town–” 

Killian shakes his head. “It’s all right, Swan,” he says, and that _Swan_ feels like a welcome goodbye. “Let’s go to the coronation. I’ll sail out after.”

He sounds happier about sailing out than he had anything else today, and Emma scoops Hope up and holds her to him, leaving Killian trailing behind her. She is wracked with uncertainty, with doubts about where she’s leaving and where she’s going, and then she walks into the massive grand hall that had once been Town Hall in a frenzy of panicked lateness and forgets it all.

She flies into the room and Regina turns, her eyes alighting upon Emma, and unspoken stress fades at once from her face. “Emma,” she breathes, and Emma returns to the night on the boat and a hundred breaths of her name before, a hundred times when _not longer than she did_ had been there waiting for her all along. 

“Sorry,” Emma says, and she can’t think to look around, even to see long-gone faces and the people she has yet to meet. All she can see is Regina’s smile. “I’m late.”

The baby is scooped up by Henry, who stands beside his much older brother and doppelganger and mouths something to Emma that she can’t decode. There is a coronation, and they watch as a tiara is lowered onto Regina’s head. Emma watches her and Killian whispers, his voice muted, “You shine, you know.” 

Emma turns to look at him, afraid that this might be an overture, but he only shakes his head and says, “When you look at her. It’s how I knew.” When she turns back to Killian again to respond, after Regina steps down from the stage to walk to her, he is already gone.

She turns away, relief falling like raindrops upon her skin, and Regina steps down into her arms and Emma thinks of nothing else. She clings to Regina, holds her as they’ve never held each other before, and she doesn’t let go. Someone– Zelena?– hoots, and Grown Henry’s deep voice hisses, “Shut _up_ , they’re having a moment–” and then the room begins to fill with noise. There is music and chatter and networking and dancing around them, a buzz of activity as the people mingle and leave them be, and Emma still holds Regina to her.

It is a long time before she finally looks up to see the glow in Regina’s eyes. “Hi,” she whispers, the first word she’d ever spoken to Regina, and she knows now what it means to be _in love_. She knows what it is to shine with it, to have a heart made so rich with it that anything can grow within it. She knows what it is to choose joy instead of settling only for being wanted.

She does what she dreams of most. It is not to kiss Regina or to lay her down in a bed and run reverent fingers across her skin. It isn’t even to slip into her life as easily as she’d slipped into her heart, to live with her and raise their children and granddaughter together in blissful togetherness. She dreams of all those things, and she knows now that she will never give them up for doubt or fear again. 

But it is what she wants most that she does in this moment: bows her forehead to press against Regina’s, holds it there and feels flowers grow, grow, grow from her heart to join the flowers that bloom beneath Regina’s skin. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! My [tip jar](https://coalitiongirl.tumblr.com/coffee), if you're so inclined, and I'd love it if you could kudos and/or drop a comment! :)


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